Nothing was attacking me, but there was no way a little acid and a force blast took out one of these guys. The way they were throwing out heavy-duty enchantments and major summonings, they had to have good defenses too. I wouldn’t be surprised if they all had healing on a par with mine, and the injured ones were just lying low and regenerating. So why wasn’t anyone attacking me?
Perhaps they don’t have anything suited to a fight in half-frozen acid? Alanna suggested. But they know exactly where we are now, and they’ve already laid out anti-teleport wards. Most likely they’re unleashing more demons, and preparing to attack the moment we emerge from the snowball.
“Probably. Will the wards cause you any trouble?” I asked.
Hardly. I was already here, so their ward merely settled around my connection to my bower. Does this mean you’re done fighting?
“Yeah. Time to quite while I’m ahead, for once. Next time we need to fight these guys, remind me to just pull out and nuke the site from orbit.”
I don’t know what that means, but you can explain later. Hurry, now. They won’t wait forever.
The circlet I wore under my helmet needed about twenty seconds to work, and it wasn’t a fun process. It started with a prickling on my scalp, and a dull sense of nausea. Then the pain hit, like needles being stabbed through my eyes. I gritted my teeth, and rode it out. My vision swam, and an uncomfortable pins and needles feeling swept up my limbs. Then there was a final stab of pain as everything was torn away.
I floated in numb darkness for a long moment. If I’d made a mistake in my enchantment this was going to suck. Although, now that I thought about it, I could still feel my connection to Alanna.
Then came another wave of grinding agony, as I was shoved and compressed into a too-small space. Nausea again, and a vague phantom limb feeling that immediately erupted into serious pins and needles. I curled into a ball of misery, and groaned.
“There, there,” Alanna said, patting me on the back. “It will pass in a few moments. You’ll need more practice to make it a smooth transition.”
“I don’t ever want to do that again,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to at some point, but ugh. Body swapping sucks.”
My eyes opened, and I found myself looking down at an unfamiliar pair of hands. I had a sample of my own blood stashed in Alanna’s bower, for when I was ready to go home. But the body I was going to use for the rest of this caper was based on an entirely different source, just to minimize the chance of some divination saying that Daniel Black was still alive.
“It gets easier with time. But I think it was wise of you to arrange matters so that you don’t need to move for a bit. Did the rest of your plan work?”
My new body wore a gold circlet, which was still connected to the one on my old body back inside the Spire. I checked the complex enchantment woven into it, and confirmed that it was working as expected.
“The countdown is running,” I said. “Help me get to the viewscreen.”
Chapter 24
Young dryads can only turn into a single wooden object, like a shield or spear. As they gain experience some of them learn to become a suit of armor, with multiple parts that are all connected to their metaphysical selves. The most powerful ones can even separate their parts a bit, and choose which one they emerge from when they resume humanoid form.
Alanna had mastered those tricks before men discovered agriculture, and gone on to pioneer new feats unheard of for any normal dryad. She’d been amused when I proposed using a ball of her wood as the core and control mechanism for an unconventional golem. Keeping it manifested and connected to her bower had been no trouble at all for her, even when it was miles away, and that mystic link gave me a channel for my own magic.
Now I stumbled to the control panel that we’d stashed in her bower, and put my hands on the wooden ball that carried the control enchantments. My magic merged with Alanna’s, linking with the enchantments we’d forged on this fragment of herself. The ancient dryad eagerly embraced the connection, happy to submerge herself in it until she became an extension of my will. For a moment the sleek huntress draped against my back was mine to command, as easily as I moved my own hands.
The state of union flowed down the connection to the ball of wood in the golem, and out into the enchanted steel around the core. Then the golem was mine to command as well.
Once the connection was established Alanna pulled away slightly, taking back a bit of her own volition. “I shall watch over your new body, my wizard,” she breathed into my ear. “Good luck with Mara’s hunt.”
“Thanks,” I said, patting her arm. She settled into place behind me, her arms around my waist, and I had to take a moment to savor the warmth of her embrace. The post-battle rush seemed stronger than usual in this new body, which probably shouldn’t have been a surprise. But we didn’t have time to waste.
I reached out across a gap of unknown miles and dimensions to activate the golem, and settle my awareness firmly inside it. The cameras activated, and I levitated out of the leather pouch I found myself in. Mara looked down at the movement.
“That you, stud?” She asked.
“It’s me,” I confirmed, speaking through the golem. Its voice was designed to sound like a young boy, which was a little disconcerting. But replicating my own voice would have been a dumb mistake.
“The show is about to start,” I went on. “Wait a minute, where are you?”
I spun the golem in place, taking in the view. She was crouched on a rooftop, with Caitlyn and Fiona at her sides. A predawn glow was just beginning to light the eastern sky, but it was still too dark for me to recognize any of the buildings around us.
“A few blocks over from the prison,” Mara answered. “I wanted to make sure we can move fast once this distraction of yours happens. Speaking of which, isn’t it supposed to be soon?”
“The timer’s about to hit zero, and you’re on a fucking roof? Damn it, we need cover! Girls, grab hold of me now. Which way is the Spire from here?”
The count reached zero, and my question became superfluous. The headband send a signal to the remote detonator I’d inserted into the Spire’s self-destruct device, telling it to do its job. Then it banished itself, leaving no traces behind for an investigator to find.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a brilliant glow welled up somewhere far to the south. I spun to face it, and threw up the strongest force barrier the golem could make.
Far in the distance I could see the Sunspire being torn apart by a thread of terrible brilliance. It lashed violently back and forth, shredding the crystal machine that had kept it bound for so long and sending steamers of flame into the sky. Great explosions sent shards of magitech machinery flying, and jets of golden fire began to leak out. Then the thread came unbound, and blossomed into a titanic ball of fire so bright it washed out my golem’s cameras for a moment.
"Whoa,” Mara breathed. “That’s a big-”
The shock wave hit us just as my vision was coming back. The rooftops in front of me exploded into a roiling mass of debris that slammed into my shield. The barrier flared into visibility, a bright orange glow outlining its carefully angled shape, with brighter flashes erupting whenever an especially large object struck it.
I’d designed this golem to act as an assistant for Mara in her effort to free the Fenris wolf, and its combat functions were almost as overpowered as the staff I’d just lost. The barrier shed the force of the blast easily, but the roof the girls were standing on was another story. It came apart just like all the others, and then there was nothing to anchor the barrier to.
Our whole group went flying.
Fortunately Caitlyn and Fiona had listened, and grabbed hold of my golem before the flash blinded them. We tumbled through the air together, crashing through obstacles as I shrank the force bubble around us, and finally fetched up against a wall of heavy stone. Rubble and broken timbers quickly buried us, but my shield easily took the weight.
“Ow,” Mara groaned
, pushing herself upright. “That was a little too exciting.”
“I think my arm is broken,” Caitlyn whimpered.
Fiona wasn’t even that coherent. She just clutched her head, and moaned in pain.
Not surprising, since unlike Mara they were just normal girls. I was glad they’d survived the ordeal at all. If the explosion had killed them their souls would be called back to Moon Ghost Hall, and I had no idea if I could get them back before they got broken down and remade.
“There was a reason I wanted you to wait on the other side of that hill, Mara,” I said. “The terrain would have protected you from the blast, and the twins wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“Shit. I’m sorry, girls. Fiona, are you alright?”
Fiona’s only reply was a dazed moan of pain. I reached out with a tendril of flesh magic, and muted the pain while I checked on her condition. Concussion, a fractured skull and a broken ankle she hadn’t even noticed yet? Ouch.
“Try to remember that not everyone is as tough as we are. Girls, I think it’s about time I got you two free.”
“Please,” Caitlyn said. “Take us away from this awful place, and keep us safe until you need us.”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry about this,” Mara said. “Look, why don’t I handle the first part of this? To apologize for fucking up. No reason to get you two hurt even more with some magic tug of war, when I can slip you free as easy as pie. Ready, Daniel?”
“Um, sure, we can do it that way. Ready.”
As much time as I’d spent studying Atlantean soul traps, building my own version hadn’t been hard. Mara brushed her hand over Caitlyn’s head, and her connection to Moon Ghost Hall vanished like a dream. Her body turned translucent, starting to fade away as the divine magic that maintained it faded. But it only took a moment to trigger the soul trap I’d built into the golem. In a flash she was sucked into it, carried through the conduit back to Alanna’s bower and safely stored away in one of the soul traps there.
Unlike the Atlantean version, mine immediately put her to sleep. She’d wake up when I was safely away from Asgard, and had time to make a real body for her.
Without a soul to hold it together the form she’d been inhabiting lost cohesion, and dissolved back into raw mana in a matter of moments. Mara frowned at the spectacle. “Was that supposed to happen?”
“Yeah, I’ve got her. Their bodies aren’t real, so they fade really fast once they’re not being used anymore. Let’s finish this up.”
She nodded, and freed Fiona as easily as she had Caitlyn. I stored her soul, and breathed a sigh of relief. I’d been a little worried about them.
“All done,” I said. “They’re safe with Alanna now.”
“Good. Okay, so, ready to start this act?”
The plan was to pretend that the little golem I was driving was Mara’s creation, rather than mine. I’d designed its combat functions to look different that my usual spells, more like something a demigoddess of fire might come up with. As long as I played the part, any witness who saw us should come away thinking Mara was a prodigy at wizardry in addition to her other talents, and had made herself an assistant.
I floated the golem up to hover above her left shoulder. “Ready, mistress. Did you settle on a name?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ugh, just call me Mara, okay? That mistress crap is embarrassing. You said this thing has an awesome fire attack, right?”
“Well, I haven’t been able to test fire it, but it should be pretty impressive.”
“Right, then I’ll call you Sunstrike. Can you get this crap off of our heads?”
Sunstrike. Right. Note to self, Mara goes for the pretentious names. Well, she was young, and she didn’t grow up on anime and video games like I did. It probably sounded cool to her.
“No problem, Mara,” I assured her. “Let’s see what’s going on out there.”
It only took a moment to angle the force field I was projecting, and let most of the debris slide off. Then I let it drop, and Mara climbed out of the mass of broken beams that remained. I floated along at her shoulder, reminding myself not to act too intelligent where people could see us.
We emerged to a scene of devastation. All of the buildings around us had gotten their upper floors destroyed by the explosion, and many had completely collapsed. A lot of people had survived, but they were still dazed with shock. Here and there I saw an elf healing the injured, or digging someone out of a collapsed building. But the humans were mostly too stunned to do anything but stare at the destruction.
A long, incredibly loud shrieking roar sounded out, sending the people scurrying for cover. Mara grinned, and bounded to the top of the highest building on the block that was still standing. I followed her up, and gazed out over the ruins.
Where the Spire had stood an enormous mushroom cloud now dominated the landscape, its brightly glowing top still rising into the air. Several square miles of the city had been flattened by the blast, and thousands of fires had sprung up amid the ruins. As nukes go the detonation had been relatively small, but a few dozen kilotons is still a hell of an explosion.
Not everything near ground zero had died, though. Souls are immaterial, so the blast that destroyed the soul prison had done no real harm to the prisoners. The trapped mortals would all be ghosts now, mad spirits wandering the streets looking for vulnerable targets to possess. But the stronger prisoners, the gods and divine monsters, weren’t so limited. One way or another, a lot of them would have ways to reform their bodies.
Case in point, a creature that looked like a mutated Tyrannosaurus Rex the size of an office building was emerging from the mushroom cloud. Rows of spikes jutted from its skull, running all the way down its back to a thagomizer at the end of its tail, and lightning danced among the body protrusions. As I watched it breathed out a cone of lighting that enveloped several blocks of half-wrecked buildings, clinging to the broken stone and eating into it like acid.
Overhead, something like a gigantic jellyfish was coalescing from the smoke. A tracery of sickly yellow light lit its translucent body, running down the tentacles that dangled hundreds of feet below it to brush against the ground. Some of the tentacles vomited out blobs of viscous slime that moved on their own, flowing out into the ruins like predators searching for prey. Others groped among the remaining buildings, starting to tear open the few structures that were still standing.
Dozens of smaller apparitions darted through the air, glowing with strange magics that I couldn’t make sense of at this distance. Some of them had to be gods, busily creating new bodies for themselves, while others were probably demons. But to be so obvious at this distance, all of them were stronger than the things I’d been fighting in the tower.
A swan flew down from the cloudy skies, and became Aphrodite. She perched lightly on a broken column next to the one Mara stood on, and laughed. “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time!”
“Don’t we?” Mara agreed. “No one is going to pay any attention to us with all this going on. Are you coming with me for the rest of it?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Show me your power, and I’ll show you my gratitude when we’re safe in your father’s camp.”
Mara blushed. “Yeah, I just bet you will. Come on.”
She took flight, using the ring I’d given her just yesterday like she’d had it all her life. I stuck with her, holding position over her right shoulder, and Aphrodite became a bird again to follow us.
I was more ambivalent about the destruction than my companions. The death toll here might end up rivaling what I’d done to the andregi when all was said and done, and this time most of the fallen would be civilians. They’d never done anything to me, and I doubted most of them even knew about the shitty things their gods did.
But that’s the nature of war. Maybe a world-spanning hyperpower with no serious rivals could afford to dick around with carefully limited strikes and avoiding civilian casualties, but that wasn’t an option here. When you’re the
underdog you don’t have the luxury of such delicate morals. You either fight back with the tools you have, or you bend over and let your enemies do what they want with you.
Besides, these were the people who thought holding a weekly tournament to see who got to rape Aphrodite next was great entertainment. If the choice was between killing them or letting Odin’s men torture my girls, I wasn’t going to hesitate.
It didn’t take long to find the prison. The massive structure of fused stone was miles away from ground zero, and had easily weathered the blast that devastated the rest of the neighborhood. The surrounding garden was a mess, but it seemed largely deserted. We approached from the rear of the building to stay out of sight of the sentries at the door.
“Looks like they haven’t sent any reinforcements this way,” Mara commented as we flew up. “Good, that will make this easy. Stay back a bit, Aphrodite. This is going to get loud.”
Mara flew across the park, and stopped directly above the prison. Instead of tile or shingles it was a seamless dome of blank gray stone, with no sign of doors or weak points.
“Hit it, Sunstrike!” Mara ordered, her voice loud and clear.
I put my crosshairs on the roof a few dozen yards ahead of us, and activated the golem’s primary weapon.
Deep inside the golem a set of conjuration rods fired, creating a firehose stream of water and saturating it with spells. One to hold it together in a tight beam, and another to carry a powerful dispelling that would be released when it struck something solid. Then the water passed through an enchanted ring that heated it with fire magic, while compressing it and accelerating it out the front of the barrel. After the first ring was another bearing the same enchantment, and then another.
One ring was enough to turn the water into a lance of steam. I’d managed to fit twelve of them into the golem. What emerged from the business end of the weapon was a dense beam of superheated plasma that split the gloom with a brilliant yellow glare.
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